


(keep up with the) red orange yellow flicker beat

by ragesyndrome



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (agnes knew but gertrude didnt), 1970s, Angst, Angst and Feels, Dancing, Dating, Didn't Know They Were Dating, F/F, Kissing, Slow Dancing, idk how to tag this one tbh, the inherent homoeroticism of being bound by a magic ritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27826189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ragesyndrome/pseuds/ragesyndrome
Summary: “My spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I dream; I dream.” - Virginia WoolfJonny Sims I see your canon that they “never met” and I raise you: whatever this is. Gertrude is entranced by Agnes, because really, who isn’t. They’re in love. It’s not enough to change things. Basically canon-compliant but with a few months of my own gay agenda shoehorned in.
Relationships: Agnes Montague & Gertrude Robinson, Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	(keep up with the) red orange yellow flicker beat

**Author's Note:**

> CW: sex (blink-and-you-miss-it, completely offscreen), descriptions of melting flesh (hypothetical / does not actually happen)

_Do you trust me?_ she loved to ask.

She’d asked it when they’d bound their destinies irrevocably together, when the Web had clutched their fates and intertwined them immeasurably until the end of time and they had held each other in that dark and nightmarish house, and Gertrude had felt herself on _fire_ for the first time, excruciating and clarifying. _Do you trust me?_ Gertrude’s answer was easy, even with her arms around the woman and the silk strands that kept them there: “Of course not.”

Agnes could ask it so _warmly_ . Showed up on Gertrude’s door, windswept red hair under a hat and her cheeks flushed from the cold. What an idea that was. Gertrude was positive Agnes could not _feel_ the cold, but her skin looked lovely with it. “And what are you here for?” Gertrude had asked primly. She felt her own mouth pull down in a straight grim line; her mother had always warned her she’d get premature wrinkles with the way she frowned, and at thirty, Gertrude was inclined to agree, but who could concern themselves with something so trivial?

Agnes looked up at her with sweet and shining eyes. “Do you trust me?”

“No,” said Gertrude, yet allowed Agnes to take her hand anyway.

It burned, still, but not the way it should have. Not like the first time. Only if she got taken by surprise did it feel like that again, her flesh sizzling as it sloughed off her bones. But whenever she looked, her palm against Agnes’ was unmarked, and she was fine, apparently. So many things seemed to scar these days. How strange it was that this, for all it burrowed under her skin and glowed orange and beating beneath her ribs, left no visible mark.

The pain should not have brought her such secretive delight. But Agnes knew. They were bound now, in far too many ways. If she felt delight, Agnes felt it, and if she felt pain, so too did Agnes.

So Gertrude was swept out the door, and they walked.

Agnes should not have felt so warm to be around. It defied her god, to harness the gentle heat of the hearth where there should only have been destruction, to nourish with it as her cheeks flushed at some inward joke. She was always quietly amused, Agnes, the way one could only be after a life of being held away at arm’s length. The way one finds humor in searing loneliness and the choking heavy press of death and destiny.

Gertrude was not prone to these flights of fancy; they did not serve her well. She knew exactly how dangerous Agnes really was, and knew that when push came to shove, they would both do whatever they felt had to be done. They already _had_ done.

“Do you want to stop for tea, darling?” Agnes asked conversationally. Gertrude could not even pretend to be surprised at the endearment; in so many ways, now, they were incapable of surprising each other, their essence too tightly knotted at its core to unknow the other. Agnes called her _darling_ and it meant both much more and much less than Gertrude wanted it to.

Perhaps wanting was the wrong word, too solid and too useless. But there was _something._

“Tea to go?” Gertrude raised an eyebrow at the little coffeehouse in question, with its clean minimalist typography and paper travel cups. “How dreadfully American.” But she acquiesced.

Agnes looped her arm through Gertrude’s and kept it there as they went in, and Gertrude blanched only for a second, adjusting to the overwhelming sensation of quietly burning alive in public. If it was a game, she was losing the advantage; Agnes kept getting under her skin in a way Gertrude could not recall ever allowing anyone to.

She let Agnes order for her, registering the delight it seemed to bring her to say “a medium earl grey for my friend. Milk, no sugar.” Sparkling eyes turned to her again. “I got it right, didn’t I?”

“Yes, quite,” Gertrude admitted. Agnes knew how she took her tea, and she knew Agnes’ entire life of desolation and prophecy. They sat in the little table by the window so Agnes could watch the people on the street. Gertrude was never one to mind the quiet; if you were going to say something, it should be worth everyone’s time. Yet here, now, her tongue felt too heavy in her throat and her mind was astonishingly blank.

It was a frightening thing for her; she was not well used to slow thoughts. She could not afford to live like this.

She sipped her tea slowly.

And this became life. Work became more dangerous, but this was the duty she had accepted. And Gertrude did not make the mistake of trusting easily, either in people or in any sense of having time. She did not have the luxury of slowing down and she did not try to indulge in it.

Except when Agnes would show up. Eyes sparkling. “Come with me, darling,” and she’d rope Gertrude into whatever she’d decided to do for an afternoon. One night she took Gertrude to the cinema. It was some animation about cats, which Gertrude would not admit amused her. Agnes had been inside her flat a few times by this point and had watched Gertrude’s own cat with a forlorn kind of love, knowing she couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t touch _anything_ , except, apparently, Gertrude.

And touch Gertrude she did.

“Do you trust me?” _Again_.

“No, my dear,” said Gertrude. She tried very hard not to smile, schooling her features into no more than a smirk. They stood over Gertrude’s record player with a new bottle of wine, and Agnes selected the music and set both their wineglasses down deliberately.

 _Fire and Rain_ began to fill the little room then. Gertrude sighed. “You think you’re terribly clever, don’t you?”

“More importantly, _you_ do,” Agnes shot back, and took Gertrude’s hand.

She had never gone dancing. From what she remembered of being a teenager, her friends had always looked forward to such things immensely. How they had rambled about such romance and magic, and later had complained about the boys who had fumbled on the floor, or worse, refused to dance even when there were girls with empty dance cards.

She had never understood. Eldritch rituals to sweep the world away in a wake of terror, that she could understand (and dismantle), but the intricate rituals of dating, made even worse under the pretense of heterosexuality…. _That,_ Gertrude had never had the time for.

Agnes took the lead, which was horribly endearing when she was so much shorter than the archivist. Spun Gertrude round the living room, her freckled arms twirling over Gertrude’s head only to reel her back in, and… It was not, probably, what it should have been. Gertrude did not think she could ever feel things the way other people described them. But it was certainly something. Every point of contact sizzling, but she was used to the discomfort now, looked forward to it even. Her world narrowed down to the amber eyes at the center of every spin, pulling her in and pushing her out, and Gertrude felt herself shining all too brightly, like a star on the verge of collapse.

Still. Gertrude had lived her entire life holding her flesh and bones together by sheer willpower, and she was not going to stop now. Even when the dance became something else, something bright and weak and flurrying when Agnes nudged her down into the couch. When searing lips touched her throat and Gertrude thought her skin might melt off. When those kisses trailed up Gertrude’s jaw and she _resolutely_ did not fall apart. It was, she supposed, delicious enough just to _want_ to.

And through the web that bound them, she felt not only every sensation as she experienced it herself, but how Agnes felt it as well. Felt the dizzying and the stirring and all the ceaseless burning that was only just barred back. Agnes traced her jawline with the deftest touch and her eyes hung heavy and her voice came weak. “Can I- ?”

Gertrude kissed her. Kissed the Desolation and kissed the heavy bitter confines of destiny and kissed a woman who was not a god but wore its mantle all the same. Kissed her breathless and her hands moved to feel the shivers as they rolled down Agnes’ shoulderblades and kissed her into bed and kissed her everywhere until the morning glowed violent and red. She was most probably in love and it was not going to change anything.

Agnes did not ask it in the morning. There was no point. She stayed long enough for Gertrude to wake, and that sparkle of warmth was not gone from her lovely brown eyes but the _question_ was. _Do you trust me?_

Gertrude was not going to make excuses. Not “in another life”. Not “if things were different”. Not “if I were not the Archivist and resigned to saving this stupid world again and again” and not “if you were not the lynchpin of the Lightless Flame’s goal to consume that stupid world in fire” and not, most importantly, “if I was willing to be truly vulnerable.”

She didn’t have the time for it. Agnes kissed her forehead, sweet and melancholy as she left, and Gertrude put on the kettle. She had work to catch up on.

**Author's Note:**

> God. They went on dates. They went to the movies and saw Aristocats. I have to die now. Personally I’m screaming at Gertrude and I would love to write her as someone actually willing to be in love but I just don’t think she is. HHhghghghgh. Leave a comment, scream with me maybe. <3
> 
> OH also: Gertrude's cat is fine and the whole "the Desolation killed my cat" thing was, in fact, a sex joke
> 
> Songs that forced me to write this fic:  
> Yellow Flicker Beat // Lorde  
> Smoke Signals // Phoebe Bridgers  
> Two Slow Dancers // Mitski  
> A Burning Hill // Mitski  
> The Only Hope For Me Is You // My Chemical Romance  
> Fire and Rain // James Taylor


End file.
